That Strange Little Brown Man: Gandhi" is a 1932 biography by Frederick B. Fisher, offering an insightful exploration of Mahatma Gandhi's life and philosophy. Fisher delves into Gandhi's early years, education, and transformative experiences in South Africa, highlighting his evolution into a pivotal figure in India's struggle for independence. The book examines Gandhi's commitment to nonviolent resistance, his spiritual beliefs, and his profound impact on both Indian society and global movements for civil rights. Through this work, Fisher provides readers with a nuanced understanding of Gandhi's enduring legacy.
I FIRST met Gandhi in 1917. The Montagu-Chelmsford Re-forms were then making ferment all over India; and Gandhi was just emerging into dominating national leadership. I conceived an immediate admiration for this amazing states man of the new cast, and that admiration has ripened through the years into friendship.
I last heard his voice over the trans-Atlantic telephone while he was in London this year at the India Round Table Conference. It was the same clear, vibrant voice. I could feel his warm personality across the three thousand miles of ocean and air. We talked for ten minutes about his health, his cause, the invitation to America, and his soul-call back to India. When he hung up the receiver he said, "I have been participating in a miracle," and then rushed off to a dinner with Lady Astor. He has been participating in a miracle for forty years ever since his mature call to human service. His very life is a miracle to those of us who know him best.
India has been my home. Twenty-eight years ago I settled in Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal. Ever since then, I have gone back and forth between the east and west, and resided for a decade from 1920 to 1930 in Calcutta. I have had opportunity, therefore, to view each civilization, not only by familiar acquaintance, but through the necessary perspective of distance and comparison. In politics I am pro-Indian but not anti-British; in religion a Christian, but not anti-Hindu nor anti-Moslem.
In presenting Indian problems as related to the Mahatma's life and work, I seek deliberately to view them through his eyes. Literature abounds giving the Anglo-Saxon bias, tone and argument. I try to turn us Anglo-Saxons around and reveal us to ourselves as the new, awakened, aggressive Indian patriots see us.
This book is a story of experience. An attempt to weigh eastern and western ideals, as well as spiritual weapons and machine guns, in the scales of practicability.
I use Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as a telescope through which to view this balancing of forces because he is, without controversy, the outstanding personality of the new east. Without him, India, in fact the whole modern Orient, is like France without Napoleon, like America without Lincoln. I shall have failed in my purpose if I do not make you see behind the statesman, or politician, or ascetic, if you wish, Gandhi the man; the living, breathing, loving, serving, repenting, triumphant Gandhi, who is my friend.
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